Postscript

Summary

A closing pictorial example can help weave together the diverse constructions of fathers, daughters, and slaves considered in this book. The example is Anne-Louis Girodet's Portrait du citoyen Belley, ex-représentant des colonies (Figure 7). Jean-Baptiste Belley, the first black deputy to the National Convention during the French Revolution, is depicted standing alongside a bust of Guillaume-Thomas Raynal, the author of Histoire des deux Indes, which famously predicted that a black Spartacus would arise to avenge the rights of the oppressed. Although the painting itself and the two persons it portrays predate the chronological framework of this book, the issues raised in Girodet's painting remained as urgent and timely in the first decades of the nineteenth century as at the time of its exhibition in 1797. The painting also has special relevance here because of its striking similarity to Firmin Massot's Mme de Staël à côté du buste de son père Jacques Necker discussed briefly in Chapter 1 (Figure 2). Massot's painting, presumed to have been commissioned by Staël shortly after her father's death in 1804, was undoubtedly modeled after Girodet's work. That Staël would have chosen a white-and-black dyad to model her relationship with her father supports the premise that women abolitionists (the “daughters” of this book) perceived deep-seated bonds between themselves and people who were black, mixed-race, or of African descent (this book's “slaves”).

Our closing overview begins with the category of fathers. In this category, Necker stands as a prototype of benevolence and fatherly love, as Massot's portrayal of him reveals.